By David Simms, Senior Contributor
The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards
Today we again proudly publish for syndication our featured columnist, Anna Kavanaugh, and her brilliant column, Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. This is Piece 3 and an excellent read in her column series. Anna's is a distinctive and ardent voice of expertise and wisdom in defining and describing what she rightly deems a global pandemic of virtual confusion whereby a societal breakdown of empathy and compassion confuse and pose serious threat to legal boundaries and civilised conduct. It is our honour to now present you with another perceptive and powerful installment of Anna's weekly column. Comments are open on the full article page for feedback and to encourage discussion.
Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. (Series Piece 3)
Written by Anna Kavanaugh, Syndicated Columnist
Published for syndication by: The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards (GICSS)
Religion, righteousness, and freedom of speech are unquestionably three of the most misconstrued and misused principles throughout history. But until recently, there has never been a time when this reality rang more true. The advent of the internet has provided the perfect breeding ground for behavioral hypocrisy, the justification of heresy, and the undermining of basic human decency by virtue of self-proclaimed morality.
Cyberspace offers its users the unrestrained and anonymous opportunity to express opinions, create and disseminate false statements or damaging innuendos about others, and vent vitriolic abuse aimed at a specific individual or the world at large. Unlike any other time in history, information planted in the vast public domain of the internet can travel around the world in a matter of minutes, reaching an audience of multi-millions. And it does not end there. Information posted to various websites or preserved on social media venues self-propagates as new users happen upon it or are directed to it by various search engines indiscriminately presenting suggested search results and links to this material indexed from their web crawls. Yes, the internet is the water cooler of the modern era; the rumor mill of the age.
